Resources for Language Study
Comfort, Philip Wesley. A Commentary on the Manuscripts and Text of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2015. 443 Pages. $34.99. https://www.kregel.com/biblical-languages/a-commentary-on-the-manuscripts-and-text-of-the-new-testament/
Comfort, Philip Wesley and David P. Barrett. The Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts Papyri 1-72 Volume 1 Third Edition (Includes photographs and dating of manuscripts). Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2019. 468 Pages. Glossy Hardcover.
Comfort, Philip Wesley. The Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts Papyri 75-139 and Uncials Volume 2 Third Edition (Includes photographs and dating of manuscripts). Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2019. 493 Pages. Glossy Hardcover.
A set of both Volumes is available for $69.99. https://www.kregel.com/biblical-languages/the-text-of-the-earliest-new-testament-greek-manuscripts-two-volume-set/
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever. That is what VDMA means to a Lutheran. That is why we feature so many resources for pastoral care, preaching, liturgy, and worship.
The resources before you in this review focus on study of the Biblical Languages, Hebrew and Greek, with a primary focus on Greek.
Two encouraging books from Baker greet us first. Let's consider them together because both books have very similar purpose, structure, and content.
Greek for LifeStrategies for Learning, Retaining, and Reviving New Testament Greek
Learning Greek is one thing. Retaining it and using it in preaching, teaching, and ministry is another. In this volume, two master teachers with nearly forty years of combined teaching experience inspire readers to learn, retain, and use Greek for ministry, setting them on a lifelong journey of reading and loving the Greek New Testament.
Designed to accompany a beginning or intermediate Greek grammar, this book offers practical guidance, inspiration, and motivation; presents methods not usually covered in other textbooks; and surveys helpful resources for recovering Greek after a long period of disuse. It also includes devotional thoughts from the Greek New Testament. The book will benefit anyone who is taking (or has taken) a year of New Testament Greek.
Contents
Foreword, by William D. Mounce
1. Keep the End in Sight
2. Go to the Ant, You Sluggard
3. Review, Review, Review
4. Use Your Memory Effectively
5. Use Greek Daily
6. Use Resources Wisely
7. Don't Waste Your Breaks
8. How to Get It Back
Sources of Featured Quotations
Indexes
Hebrew for Life
Three experienced biblical language professors inspire students and pastors to learn, retain, and use Hebrew for ministry, setting them on a lifelong journey of reading and loving the Hebrew Bible. Written in a conversational style, Hebrew for Life offers practical guidance, inspiration, and motivation. It provides effective strategies to help readers learn biblical Hebrew, maintain current knowledge, and enjoy reading the Old Testament in its original language.
This companion volume to the successful Greek for Life incorporates research-tested strategies for learning, presents methods not usually covered in other textbooks, and surveys helpful resources for recovering Hebrew after a long period of disuse. It will benefit anyone who is taking (or has taken) a year of Hebrew.
Contents
Foreword by Miles V. Van Pelt
1. The Goal of the Harvest
2. Weighed in the Balances and Found Wanting
3. Review the Fundamentals Often
4. Develop a Next-Level Memory
5. Strategically Leverage Your Breaks
6. Read, Read, Read
7. The Wisdom of Resources
8. Hebrew's Close Cousin--Aramaic
9. Getting Back in Shape
Sources of Featured Quotations
Indexes
(Publisher's website)
This pair of books is for pastors, seminarians, and anyone interested in the main two biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek. The Greek volume came out first and found a quick, appreciative audience, and showed the need for the Hebrew volume. In an ideal world, Hebrew Bible editions, reference works, and helps would just as available, but sadly that is simply not the case. I am thankful that the authors, editors, and this publisher used the proven structure of the Greek volume to produce a Hebrew volume of the same quality and practical helpfulness.
I like that Luther's reminder about the languages is shared with a wide audience (Greek 4). The author's suggestions are not limited to this publisher's titles. That shows humility, helpfulness, and a wide breadth of experience, expertise, and scholarship. Tips for learning, re-learning, and retaining Greek and Hebrew show purpose, intentionality, and good use of time and scheduling that are realistic and achievable for laypeople, busy seminarians, and parish pastors. They show knowledge of classical techniques (loci/memory palace), the fruit of computerized scholarship (word frequency, alternate readings), and the beauty of reading the Hebrew Bible alongside the Greek Septuagint and the Greek New Testament.
We highly recommend both volumes as a blessing to you.
Four volumes from Kregel will conclude this review.
The first volume is helpful to the pastor or student wanting help in the Greek.
A powerful, time-saving new study resource for readers of the Greek New Testament
Only by immersing oneself consistently in the Greek New Testament can students, pastors, and other readers gain facility with the language. This invaluable guide from Charles Lee Irons streamlines and enhances the process, allowing readers to interact with the Greek text with minimal interruption and maximum understanding. By focusing specifically on syntax, this guide takes its place among other resources as a time-saving new tool that builds on, rather than replaces, what already exists. In the author's words, it "picks up where these other tools leave off, presupposes their use, and moves on to more complex issues of syntax, translation, some textual criticism, and limited exegesis."
Eminently useful, A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
- Provides brief explanations of intermediate and advanced syntactical features of the Greek text
- Suggests translations to help the reader make sense of unusual phrases and difficult sentences
- Eliminates the need for the reader to stop and look up intermediate, advanced, or unusual grammatical features of the Greek text
- Recognizes Hebraic constructions, Semitic inferences,and Septuagintisms
- Closely follows the Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th and 28th editions
Charles Lee Irons (PhD in New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary) began his studies of classical and koine Greek as an undergraduate at UCLA and has studied the Greek New Testament for twenty-six years. An ordained Presbyterian pastor, he currently serves as the director for the Office of Research Administration at Charles Drew University.
(Publisher's website)
Benefits of this particular volume are its brevity, conciseness, and portability. There is a lot packed into a book the size of a portable Greek New Testament. Use it side by side with your NA, UBS, Tyndale House, or English New Testament for insights that will help you in sermon or Bible Class preparation, or edify your personal devotional or Bible study. I've found helps when using a Reader's Edition with footnoted vocabulary or an academic GNT with an apparatus.
As a test for its helpfulness, look up Romans 1:17, the ending of Mark, 1 Corinthians 11, or Matthew 26 and 38. I appreciate scholarship without obvious bias! Need more information? Reference works are noted in each entry for easy lookup in larger, less-portable resources.
This is quite the handbook! It's initial release missed us somehow, but we are thankful to reconnect with this publisher.
The following three volumes really should be considered a set. Two definitely are, designated as Volume 1 and Volume 2. I encourage you to buy the smaller green commentary volume, too.
An up-to-date commentary on all the significant manuscripts and textual variants of the New Testament
This small and insightful volume is an essential resource for the committed student of Greek New Testament. Using the same trim size as UBS and NA28 Greek New Testaments, this reference commentary, based on the latest research, is designed to aid the reader in understanding the textual reliability, variants, and translation issues for each passage in the New Testament.
Unlike any other commentary, this volume contains commentary on actual manuscripts rather than a single version of the Greek New Testament. There are nearly 6,000 existing manuscripts, and just as many textual variants, with thousands of manuscripts having been discovered since the time of the King James Version. This commentary is filled with notes on significant textual variants between these manuscripts.
Philip Wesley Comfort, PhD, has been a senior editor at Tyndale House Publishers for the last twenty-five years. He has written two novels, three poetry collections, and over fifteen volumes on New Testament studies. He and his wife, Georgia, live in South Carolina.
(Publisher's website)
I do disagree with the author's conclusions regarding the ending(s) of Mark (197-206). That said, I find great value in a book like this that gives thoughtful expansions of what the apparatus at the bottom of the page of a scholarly Greek New Testament means. That's the big idea behind this volume.
You will find many helpful resources including a list of the earliest manuscripts for each chapter of the GNT (11ff), an explanation of each of the P numbered papyrus manuscripts (discovery, contents, location, date, and assessment; 45ff), description of the significant uncial manuscripts (Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus, etc.; 93ff), miniscules (111ff), ancient versions (115ff), and quotes in the Church Fathers (123ff).
Significant nomina sacra (sacred names) are explained throughout and in an Appendix.
The main part of the text annotates significant verses to posit original wording with reasoning based on the manuscripts explained earlier in the volume.
Recommended.
The manuscripts that form the Greek New Testament are scattered throughout the world and are usually only accessible to scholars and professionals. These were the manuscripts read by the earliest Christians, which comprised their "New Testament." In his volumes, Philip Wesley Comfort bridges the gap between these extant copies and today's critical text by providing accurate transcriptions of the earliest New Testament manuscripts, with photographs on the facing pages so readers can see the works for themselves. Comfort also provides an introduction to each manuscript that summarizes the content, date, current location, provenance, and other essential information, including the latest findings. This allows students and scholars to make well-informed decisions about the translation and interpretation of the New Testament.
Volume 1 includes manuscripts from Papyrus 1-72. Volume 2 includes manuscripts from Papyrus 75-139 as well as from the uncials. In addition, it features a special section on determining the date of a manuscript. This two-volume set replaces the previously published single volume Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts, as it contains many new manuscripts, updated research, and additional manuscript images.
(Publisher's website)
This is a new edition of a 2001 resource I just missed out on seeing in our seminary library since I graduated in 2000.
Does every pastoral library need to have this set? Perhaps not, but most parish pastors would definitely benefit in a better understanding of the earliest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. Every Christian college library and seminary library should have multiple copies available for checkout and reference.
This set prints transcriptions of sixty-nine of the earliest GNT manuscripts. I don't know of any other reference that does that to this extent, including photographs and even P139, the most recently published early New Testament manuscript (10). Look at the text with your own eyes. Look at the photographs with your own eyes. This is a treasure-trove of scholarship for further scholarship! Recommended!
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever. Therefore, our study of it should be life-long.
Rev. Paul J Cain is Senior Pastor of Immanuel, Sheridan, Wyoming, Headmaster Emeritus and Instructor of Liberal Arts at Martin Luther Grammar School and Immanuel Academy, a member of the Board of Directors of the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education, First Vice-President of the Wyoming District of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and Chairman of its Board of Directors, Rhetoric Teacher for Wittenberg Academy, a regent for Luther Classical College, a Director for Steadfast Lutherans and Associate Editor of Curriculum for Steadfast Press, and Editor of Lutheran Book Review. He has served as an LCMS Circuit Visitor, District Worship Chairman, District Evangelism Chairman, District Education Chairman/NLSA Commissioner, and District Secretary. A graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Rev. Cain is a contributor to Lutheran Service Book, Lutheranism 101, the LSB Hymnal Companion hymn and liturgy volumes, and is the author of 5 Things You Can Do to Make Our Congregation a Caring Church. He is an occasional guest on KFUO radio. He has previously served Emmanuel, Green River, WY and Trinity, Morrill, NE. Rev. Cain is married to Ann and loves reading and listening to, composing, and making music.
